1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods for transferring home appliance control data, and more particularly to a system and method for transferring home appliance control data, which can reduce a burden on a control data provision server that stores data for control of a home appliance and Java applications for execution of the control data in Java phones.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, home appliances connectable to the Internet and controllable by users outside of their homes have been significantly increasingly used.
Such home appliances are generally equipped with communication modules, such as local area network (LAN) cards or modems, so as to be connectable to the Internet, transmit and receive information to/from the Internet and be controllable over the Internet. Also, home appliances connected to the Internet transmit information regarding their operating states to the Internet, so that users of the home appliances can monitor the operating states of the appliances over the Internet.
However, the installation of separate communication modules in home appliances for connection of the appliances to the Internet, as mentioned above, increases manufacturing costs of the appliances and in turn reduces the competitiveness of the appliances in the market place.
In order to avoid the above problems, a system has been developed and used which, without installing communication modules in home appliances, connects the home appliances to a personal computer (PC) usually used in a home and in turn connects them to the Internet through the PC, and then controls the appliances over the Internet. However, because the PC is a computing device fixed in one specific place, a user must always inconveniently move to the specific place to control the home appliances using the PC.
In order to remove the above inconvenience, a cellular phone-based home appliance control system has recently been proposed which connects a home appliance to a cellular phone and transfers control information to the home appliance through the cellular phone to control the appliance.
A cellular phone generally used in the cellular phone-based home appliance control system is a Java phone including a Java virtual machine for execution of a Java application. The Java phone stores a Java application for downloading and executing control data. That is, as the Java application stored in the Java phone is executed, control data is downloaded.
By way of example, assume that a plurality of Java phones 3 and 4 are provided to transfer control data to one home appliance 1 and have Java virtual machines (not shown) of different Java program coding schemes, respectively, as shown in FIG. 1. In this case, a control data provision server 2, which stores control data and Java applications for execution thereof, must have the same number of Java applications per one control data as that of the Java virtual machines contained in the Java phones 3 and 4.
In other words, provided that the control data provision server 2 has 200 control data and three types of Java phones exist, the server 2 will have to store 600 Java applications. This increases the capacity of the server 2 and a burden thereon.